Aurelion Sol Won’t Last as Long as You Might Think

It’s been a little over a week since Aurelion Sol was brought into the spotlight in League’s client. Since then, most of us have been waiting for him to be released. We are especially interested in how the Star Forger might fare in 1 VS 1s. Honestly, Aurelion seems a bit too subtle to last too long up close.

The passive, Center of the Universe, looks pretty neat but take a closer look. In fact, take a look at the preview on the official page. Aurelion’s stars follow the inner orbit, which by the way, Pantheon can easily cross with his W (Aegis of Zeonia). After that he can spear the living daylights out of Aurelion.

In fact, almost every melee champion can take a couple of hits from Aurelion’s passive, survive, and then butcher him up close. Sure the W can increase the stars’ damage, but by the time the expand, the enemy would be too close and the W would be useless. Also, to get the W and passive right, you need to move a lot with Aurelion.

Granted, Aurelion’s Q, Star Surge, looks like it can deal a decent amount of burst AP damage. It’s like Anivia’s Q (Flash Frost). Pressing Q on Aurelion releases a literal galaxy of stars in the path of your choosing. It explodes when it reaches the outer orbit, causing damage and stunning enemies effected.

The cool bit is that you can move Aurelion with the Q, so that it doesn’t reach the end of the outer orbit. This will increase the size of the Q overtime, thus increase damage and area of effect. However, as nifty as that ability sounds, it’s actually pretty counterproductive.

If you hit the Q as is, without moving with it, it does not do as much damage as you would like it to. Ergo, you MUST move with it for it to be useful. Moving with your own Q isn’t an easy task as is. Couple that with the knowledge that you cannot make it turn with you. So you’re basically focused on moving forward in a straight line with your Q, just watching it grow. In that time, the enemy could probably move out of the way, dance a little, and then kill your ass.

Aurelion’s W, Celestial Expansion, pushes the circling stars to the outer orbit. This increases their damage and orbiting speed. Pretty good to catch any escaping enemies. But easily countered if the enemy is a little confident. 3 orbiting stars leaves quite some gap while orbit. This means the orbit can be crossed without taking any damage, or just taking a single hit. Sure, you can toggle the W to bring the stars back to the inner orbit. But by that time, the enemy would’ve probably crossed that orbit as well. So the passive becomes useless, so does the W in such a case.

Moving on the E, Comet of Legend. This takes a little time to wrap your head around. It has a passive that builds stacks of speed for Aurelion as he moves in a single direction. Taking a sharp turn will bring delete all stacks, so you’re back to your original movement speed. The passive also grants stacks of something called Escape Velocity. Activating E pops up a long path visual path that you can set once. This takes Aurelion up into the air, crossing over obstacles, minions, and champions. There is also a major speed boost. A decent escape plan. The downside is that the path cannot be altered, and Aurelion cannot turn. Taking enemy damage will bring Aurelion back to earth.

Take Bard’s E (Magical Journey). The dude opens up a portal from one point to another. He can travel through it and escape almost any sort of situation. Yes, the enemy champion can travel through it too, but the ability grants Bard a couple seconds vital to escape. Taking damage doesn’t bring Bard down.

With Aurelion’s E, you won’t know what you’ll find while you’re merrily crossing the fog of war. And you can easily be struck down.

Aurelion’s R, Voice of Light, reminded us of Vel’Koz. Except Vel’Koz’s ultimate lasts a lot longer and does major damage overtime. Tapping R wit Aurelion brings up an unalterable path. Click and Aurelion lights it up with starfire, causing decent damage and slowing enemies struck. It also pushes enemies inside his inner orbit, back to his outer orbit. You could probably combo this up with the W for a little extra damage.

We would have liked the ultimate to be something more than just a ray of light. Maybe be a little bendable. Or even travel a greater distance like Lux’s beam. If anything, there could’ve been a better name than Voice of Light.

It looks like the developers at Riot have toned down a few champions, gave it a new name and model, and released it with a brilliant opening video. They’ve made him look so threatening. But in action, he looks like a large, friendly, spectral dragon.